Appendix E
Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff
Wayne C. Huber, Chair, is professor in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at Oregon State University. Prior to moving to Oregon State in 1991, he served 23 years on the faculty of the Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences at the University of Florida where he engaged in several studies involving the hydrology and water quality of South Florida regions. Dr. Huber’s technical interests are principally in the areas of surface hydrology, stormwater management, non-point-source pollution, and transport processes related to water quality. He is one of the original authors of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Storm Water Management Model. Dr. Huber is a former member of three National Research Council (NRC) committees, including the Committee on Restoration of the Greater Everglades Ecosystem. He holds a B.S. in engineering from the California Institute of Technology and an M.S. and Ph.D. in civil engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Barbara L. Bedford is senior research associate at Cornell University. She joined the Department of Natural Resources in 1989, having served as the Associate Director of Cornell University’s Ecosystems Research Center since 1980. Dr. Bedford’s research focuses on wetland plant diversity, what controls it, how human actions affect it, and how to manage it. Her current projects include relationship of groundwater hydrology and chemistry to nutrient availability, plant productivity, and plant species diversity; interrelationships among nutrient availability, plant tissue chemistry, and plant species diversity; landscape control of wetland biogeochemistry and hydrology; and plant species diversity in phosphorus-poor wetlands. In 2001, Dr. Bedford received the National Merit Award from the Society of Wetland Scientists (SWS) for outstanding achievements in wetland science. She recently was elected vice president of the SWS and will become president in 2006. Dr. Bedford is a former member of the NRC’s Committee on Restora-
tion of the Greater Everglades Ecosystem. She received a B.A. from Marquette University’s Honors Program in 1968, and an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1977 and 1980, respectively.
Linda K. Blum is research associate professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia. Her current research projects include study of mechanisms controlling bacterial community abundance, productivity, and structure in tidal marsh creeks; impacts of microbial processes on water quality; organic matter accretion in salt marsh sediments; and rhizosphere effects on organic matter decay in anaerobic sediments. Dr. Blum was previously the chair of the NRC’s Panel to Review the Critical Ecosystem Studies Initiative and member of the Committee on Restoration of the Greater Everglades Ecosystem. She earned a B.S. and M.S. in forestry from Michigan Technological University and a Ph.D. in soil science from Cornell University.
Donald F. Boesch is a professor of marine science and President of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. Dr. Boesch is a biological oceanographer who has conducted research in coastal and continental shelf environments along the Atlantic Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, eastern Australia, and the East China Sea. He has served as science advisor to many state and federal agencies and regional, national, and international programs. In 1980, Dr. Boesch was appointed as the first executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, where he was also a professor of marine science at Louisiana State University. Earlier he was a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Queensland and subsequently served on the faculty of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. Dr. Boesch was a member of the NRC’s Ocean Studies Board and served on the Committee to Assess the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Methods of Analysis and Peer Review for Water Resources Planning. He received his B.S. from Tulane University and Ph.D. from the College of William and Mary.
F. Dominic Dottavio is president of Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio. Before joining Heidelberg, he served as the Dean and Director of Ohio State University at Marion from 1993 to 2003, where he also held an appointment as a professor of natural resources. Prior to arriving at Ohio State, Dr. Dottavio was the chief scientist and assistant regional director of the National Park Service in Atlanta. He also has served as the director of the Clemson University Cooperative Park Studies Unit, director of the Center
for Natural Areas in Washington, DC, and was a policy analyst with the Heritage Conservation/Recreation Service. Dr. Dottavio is a former member of the NRC’s Panel to Review the Critical Ecosystem Studies Initiative. He earned a B.S. in natural resource management from The Ohio State University, an M.S. in forest science from Yale University, and a Ph.D. from Purdue University.
William L. Graf is Foundation University Professor and professor and chair of the Department of Geography at the University of South Carolina. His expertise is in fluvial geomorphology and hydrology, as well as policy for public land and water. Dr. Graf’s research and teaching have focused on river-channel change, human impacts on river processes, morphology, and ecology, along with contaminant transport and storage in river systems. His present work emphasizes the downstream effects of dams on rivers. In the arena of public policy, he has emphasized the interaction of science and decision making, and the resolution of conflicts among economic development, historical preservation, and environmental restoration for rivers. Dr. Graf has served as member of the NRC’s Water Science and Technology Board and Board on Earth Sciences and Resources and is also a former member of the NRC’s Panel to Review the Critical Ecosystem Studies Initiative and Committee on Restoration of the Greater Everglades Ecosystem. He is a National Associate of the National Academies. Dr. Graf earned a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1974.
Chris T. Hendrickson is the Duquesne Light Company Professor of Engineering and head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. His research, teaching, and consulting are in the general area of engineering planning and management, including design for the environment, system performance, project management, finance, and computer applications. Dr. Hendrickson’s current research projects include life-cycle assessment methods, a National Science Foundation/U.S. Department of Transportation project on exploiting motor vehicle information, assessment of alternative construction materials, economic and environmental implications of E-commerce, product takeback planning, and corporate environmental management systems. Dr. Hendrickson has served on several NRC committees including most recently the Committee for Review of the Project Management Practices Employed on the Boston Central Artery (“Big Dig”) Project. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees from Stanford University, a master of philosophy degree in economics from Oxford University, and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Jianguo (Jack) Liu is Rachel Carson Chair and University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Michigan State University. His research has been in the areas of conservation ecology, landscape ecology, human-environment interactions, systems modeling and simulation, and impacts of human population and activity on spatiotemporal dynamics of endangered species such as the giant panda in China. He is keenly interested in integrating ecology with socioeconomics as well as human demography and behavior for understanding and managing patterns, processes, and sustainability of biodiversity and natural resources/ ecosystem services across multiple temporal and spatial scales. Dr. Liu is currently serving on editorial boards of six journals, including Ecosystems, Ecological Modeling, and Landscape and Urban Planning. Dr. Liu completed his postdoctoral study at Harvard University after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Georgia.
Gordon H. Orians is professor emeritus of biology at the University of Washington, Seattle. He has been a member of the faculty of the University of Washington since 1960 and served as director of its Institute of Environmental Studies from 1976 to 1986. Dr. Orians’ research interests include the evolution of vertebrate social systems, territoriality, habitat selection, and environmental quality. He is a past president of the Ecological Society of America, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. Dr. Orians was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1989. He has served as chair of the NRC’s Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, as a member of the NRC’s Report Review Committee, and as chair or member of many other NRC committees and commissions, including the Committee on Restoration of the Greater Everglades Ecosystem for one year. Dr. Orians holds a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of California at Berkeley.
P. Suresh C. Rao is the Lee A. Rieth Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering at Purdue University. Prior to his appointment at Purdue, he spent 25 years at the University of Florida as assistant, associate, and full professor and then in his final role as director of the Center for Natural Resources. Dr. Rao’s research interests include remediation engineering (contaminated site characterization and cleanup) and ecological engineering (monitoring the impacts of land-use management practices on ecosystem integrity and function). He served as a member of the NRC’s Water Science and Technology Board from 1988 to 1991 and has served on several NRC committees including as chair of the Committee on Innovative Remediation Technolo-
gies. Dr. Rao holds a B.Sc. in agriculture from the A.P. Agricultural University in India (1967), an M.S. in soil science from Colorado State University (1970), and a Ph.D. in soil science from the University of Hawaii (1974).
Leonard A. Shabman is resident scholar at Resources for the Future, Inc. (RFF) in Washington, D.C. He is also professor emeritus in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, where he served as the director of the Virginia Water Resources Research Center from 1995 until his move to RFF in 2002. During his career, Dr. Shabman has served as a staff economist at the United States Water Resources Council, as Scientific Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Army, Civil Works, and as Visiting Scholar at the NRC. Dr. Shabman’s current research includes permitting under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act; strategies for water quality standard setting under the Clean Water Act; design of market-like systems for securing environmental enhancements; and innovations in the evaluation protocols for water resources projects. He is currently a member of the NRC’s Water Science and Technology Board. Dr. Shabman earned a Ph.D. in resource and environmental economics from Cornell University.
Jeffrey R. Walters is Bailey Professor of Biology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, a position he has held since 1994. His professional experience includes assistant, associate, and full professorships at North Carolina State University from 1980 until 1994. Dr. Walters has done extensive research and published many articles on the red-cockaded woodpeckers in North Carolina and Florida, and he chaired an American Ornithologists’ Union Conservation Committee Review that looked at the biology, status, and management of the Cape Sable Seaside Sparrow, a bird native to the Everglades. His research interests include cooperative breeding in birds, reproductive biology of precocial birds, primate intragroup social behavior, ecological basis of sensitivity to habitat fragmentation, kinship effects on behavior, and dispersal behavior. Dr. Walters previously served as a member of the NRC’s Committee on Restoration of the Greater Everglades Ecosystem. He holds a B.A. from West Virginia University and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
STAFF
Stephanie E. Johnson is a senior program officer with the Water Science and Technology Board. Since joining the NRC in 2002, she has served as study
director for five committees, including the Panel to Review the Critical Ecosystem Studies Initiative and the Committee on Water System Security Research. She has also worked on NRC studies on contaminant source remediation, the disposal of coal combustion wastes, and desalination. Dr. Johnson received her B.A. from Vanderbilt University in chemistry and geology, and her M.S. and Ph.D. in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia on the subject of pesticide transport and microbial bioavailability in soils.
David J. Policansky is a scholar and director of the Program in Applied Ecology and Natural Resources in the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology. He earned a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Oregon. Dr. Policansky has directed approximately 35 NRC studies and his areas of expertise include genetics; evolution; ecology, including fishery biology; natural resource management; and the use of science in policy making.
Dorothy K. Weir is a research associate with the Water Science and Technology Board. She has worked on a number of studies including Water Quality Improvement in Southwestern Pennsylvania, Water System Security Research, and Colorado River Basin Water Management. Ms. Weir received a B.S. in biology from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, and an M.S. degree in environmental science and policy from Johns Hopkins University. She joined the NRC in 2003.